Tuesday 31 August 2010

Flawless Victoly



Finally our awsum kinship got the LT down in Hard Mode \o/. Actually the whole fight is so much easier in HM than EM, but the radiance gating kept us from trying HM - until now. It does feel good having beaten the last raid challenge in the whole game before the next update.. which is due in just 2 weeks.



Meanwhile, my minstrel is feeling down and getting drunk and thrown out of bars. Totally not mirroring my miserable snot-filled flu day.

Friday 27 August 2010

Lazy people




Idle hands during a RP event.

F-f-f-fangirl squee

New Final Fantasy XIV pre-release trailer:


I haven't made much noise about it yet, but I have to admit I'm really really looking forward to Final Fantasy XIV. Not only because I liked Square's previous mmo, FFXI, but also because it speaks directly to the innocent adventure-lover in me. In films, literature and games I always have a soft spot for just pure heroic adventure, and that's what FFXIV seems to be all about. Forget EPIC FEUDS between TWO FACTIONS (cue world pvp), forget LOOMING APOCALYPSE (although, knowing the FF series, it's probably somewhere in there), forget.. well, can't quite come up with a good third punchline right now, but I'll tell you if I find one. What we've seen of FFXIV seems to indicate that we're all just aspiring nobodies looking to find some GOOD HONEST ADVENTURE.

I've already preordered the collector's edition of the game. I happened to win a gift voucher to a local game store in their Facebook lottery (lulz), so I thought I might as well shell out for the bigger package since I don't really buy any other games anymore. The lucky bit is that with the CE I'll be able to join the game earlier than those who buy the regular package, although I'll have to see how the dreaded EXP fatigue will turn out and whether or not the early access will be of any other use than for reserving names.

Which reminds me, I need to pick a name for my toon. I think I'm going to roll a catgirl just for the giggles and call her Tui. Seems that in FFXIV each toon has a 2-part name so I've got a month now to figure out a good surname for her.

Oh yes, also the game's lead art designer is Akihiko Yoshida, my favourite character designer of all time. *massive fangasm*

What are your thoughts on FFXIV? Anyone I know planning on playing when it launches?

Thursday 26 August 2010

Now I get it



-- why certain people hate the LT fight so passionately. As a hunter I'm actually pretty damn good in there, all things considered (honestly, it's just one massive ego trip for hunters), but now that I've seen it as LM I can only say.. can we please forget that place even exists and never ever go there again? Please? And maybe nuke it from orbit too?

Sunday 22 August 2010

Delving Deeper


One part I hadn't yet explored in LotRO was the Delving of Frór, the labyrinthine dungeon inside Ettenmoors that houses several raid-worthy bosses as well as the chance to run into hostile players while farming for valuable spirit-stones.





Started with the Rogmul fight, which took a few tries to get him down. It got especially exciting since we were expecting creeps to sneak up and gank us anytime.


Tree boss. We ran into creep players here, they were waiting for us on the other side of the boss and his adds, so we had a burglar HIPS-pull the boss while the whole group rushed over to spank the poor creeps.



Finished with the drake boss. Nom nom, delicious tank!

Tuesday 17 August 2010

Guild Wars, my old love!


I was browsing through some image files on my old hard drive and stumbled upon my old Guild Wars screendump! I used to be a such a community who--spammer in GW that my screenshot folders must have held several gigabytes worth of pictures, especially since I took part in several screenshot contests and used to make character portraits for ingame profit. I found these old shots I had taken for a funny community-run contest called "Tyria's Next Top Model", which had these weekly fashion-related assignments and really pushed people to take some extraordinary screens in the game.






Damn that game still looks gorgeous. Out of curiosity I went and logged in, but alas, my oldest (existing) character still needs 2 more months until her fifth birthday and, hopefully, some really cool birthday present!

Sunday 15 August 2010

Good night!





With all the stuff going on irl (just finished moving, yay!) I've only been able to log in for short amounts of time. However on one of my trips* between the AH and crafting hall in Lórien I stumbled upon a very nice sight - there's a short moment between the "pale golden afternoon light" and "obscenely turquoise night light" when Lórien looks really pretty and almost how I imagined it in my mind when I first read fellowship of the Ring.

* to craft and then post on AH some insanely overpriced hunter consumables

I think I could still sleep for a week more. Good night!

Thursday 12 August 2010

Duuuuuh



palefolk are awesome!!!


Also, Kras has a huge ass.
"This whole issue seems very confusing to me. Why cant they just make everything free for everybody? It's not as if all this virtual stuff is real anyway."

That quote almost deserves a blink tag.

(source)

Not just pretty ladies in dresses

Just so you know I don't have any elf princess/pretty dress fetishes. I managed to grab a couple screenies of friends' burly warriors in action.





That mohawk looks like it could be used as a close-range weapon, too. Headbutt!

Wednesday 11 August 2010

Classic Armours: Helegrod, Part 3 of 3

Aaaaand here's the last part of the Helegrod armour feature. I've also added all my previous armour posts on a separate armour page so they're easier to find.

Dragon-scale set
Click for full size!
Champion set, which has a really cool-looking breastplate and looks gorgeous in all-red. All these heavy armours look rather silly on my skinny elf chick though..

War-captain's set
Click for full size!
Captain set, which has such a tall helmet that it didn't fit entirely in my dressing room window. As with most heavy armours, this one looks much more impressive on Men.

High Protector's set
Click for full size!
Guardian set, which has a distinct dwarven look and looks better on dwarves, of course.

Next up is Ettenmoors armour, after that it'll be a trickier task to get screenshots of each endgame set, since most barterers in Moria, Lórien and Mirkwood are class-specific so I can't just waltz around with my main and check out each set in one go. Luckily I've now got all classes at 60+ so I can actually go and try on every set, it'll just take much longer and the screens won't look as uniform because of race/gender/location differences.

Monday 9 August 2010

Classic Armours: Helegrod, Part 2 of 3

Sorry for the delayed updates! I've been swamped by illustration work and stuff. I'm moving in with my bf soon so it's going to be a load of work packing all my stuff, cleaning his place and mine and trying not to lose our sanity in the process. Anyway, to continue the classic Helegrod thread, here are the medium armours:

Armour of the Aurochs
Click for full size!
Hunter set, which has the best set bonus in hunter history and will probably become popular again after the instance update.


Shadow-stalker set
Click for full size!
Burglar set, lovely shirt and miniskirt! I'm SO going to share this set across all my toons using the Wardrobe.

Spear-shaker's set
Click for full size!
Warden set, which is a lot more muted than the other garish Helegrod sets, but very stylish nonetheless. I think I want it...